By Hideyuki Sano
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese fund managers kept overall allocations of stocks and bonds largely unchanged in their model portfolios in April but raised weightings on U.S. stocks and bonds, a Reuters survey showed.
A survey of seven Japan-based fund managers, conducted between April 16 and 23 found respondents on average wanted to allocate 44.1 percent of their funds to equities, unchanged from March.
Their allocation to bonds ticked up to 50.6 percent from 50.3 percent, but was still within its 50-52 percent range in the past six months.
Within equities, fund managers raised weightings on U.S. and Canadian shares to 31.1 percent from 24.7 percent last month, matching an eight-month high hit in February, rotating out of recent outperformers such as Japanese and Asian shares.
They trimmed Japanese stock weightings to 38.2 percent from 39.8 percent and slashed ex-Japan Asian shares to 2.0 percent from 7.0 percent.
U.S. shares have underperformed this year due to a run of disappointing U.S. economic data, concerns about headwinds from a strong dollar and expectations of a rate hike by the Federal Reserve later this year.
The S&P 500 index (SPX) has risen 2.4 percent so far this year.
In contrast, Japanese shares (TOPX) have risen 13.6 percent on hopes of earning growth and corporate reforms.
Chinese shares (CSI300) have surged 36 percent on hopes that Beijing will roll out further stimulus measures for the slowing economy, even as authorities try to curb excessive gains in share prices by cracking down on margin buying and encouraging short-selling.
Fund managers also preferred U.S. markets for bond investments, due to higher yields there than elsewhere, while they reduce exposure to euro zone, where yields have fallen below zero percent.
The weighting on U.S. bonds rose to 30.0 percent from 24.5 percent while their euro zone weighting was cut to 23.3 percent from 24.5 percent.
Allocations to Japanese bonds rose to 38.8 percent from 37.5 percent.